Identifying barriers and constraints to implement reforms in the financial and operational accountability systems of public universities

Introduction
       Public universities around the world are faced with environmental change. The leading to a need for improved information for decision making to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of service quality. Reforms of accountability system have been one program to provide improved information for decision making in higher education. Reforms taking place in most developed and developing countries have faced challenges, barriers and problems. Despite the emphasis of the legislators in the Third Economic, Social and Cultural plan based on the reforms in governmental budgeting and changes from program budgeting to performance-based budgeting, the end of 1383 was the last year of the program, was not gained much success. Still trying to establish performance-based budgeting continued in the fourth and fifth development programs coding are also considered guidelines for universities and public sector accounting system based on accrual accounting implementation of the notification of the beginning of 1394, is in line with the implementation of the reforms. Due to the above argument, we need to examine why despite the flaws of the current accounting system and provided necessary legislative, including the areas of autonomy granted to universities, drastic reforms  in the Financial system and operational accountability of these institutions has not been happened. In fact what kind of barriers has the implementation of reforms in financial and operational accountability system of public universities has been faced with? What are the momentums beginning with reforms in state universities?
 
Research Questions
1- What are the Confusers of reform in financial accountability and operational system of public universities?
2- What are the frustrators of reform in financial accountability and operational system of public universities?
3- What are the Delayer of reform in financial accountability and operational system of public universities?
4- What are the momentum of reform in financial accountability and operational system of public universities?
 
Research Method
       The aim of this study is to identify barriers and constraints in implementing reforms in the of financial and operational accountability system of public universities using Delphi research and  gaining opinions of experts in this field. The study population consisted of all experts in the field of reforms of the financial and operational accountability system of universities. Due to the limited number of experts in this area snowball sampling was used to identify them and 40 experts were formed Delphi members. In this study, to determine consensus among panel members Kendall's coefficient was used. Kendall‘s coefficient of concordance (Kendall‘s W), is a consensus criterion representing the level of consensus between the participants. Kendall‘s coefficient of concordance ranges from 0 to 1, indicating the degree of consensus reached by the panel (strong consensus for W > 0.7; moderate consensus for W=0.5; and weak consensus for W < 0.3). In the case of yes and no questions, tests are developed on the basis of two states non-parametric tests are used to analyze the data. The Binomial test is done for every single question.
T-test is used to assess the severity of an agreement among experts.
 
Results
       Results showed that the experts have strong agreement on three of the five factors, as Confusers, among them the knowledge and unrelated Field of Study were identified as the primary causes of conflict.
       Strong agreement of experts with all five factors of frustrators were documented. Eight cases of the ten factors as Delayer, were agreed upon by the experts and the top Delayer was the lack of qualified managers to oversee the reform process and support it. Finally, all factors contributing to momentum received strong agreement but training of Establishment  team, ranked  as first momentum.
 
Discussion and Conclusion
       The results of comparative studies in the literature of reforms in financial and operational accountability system in universities showed that for successful implementation of reforms key success factors are required in most countries. Due to the lack of necessary infrastructure for the reform process of change, evidence points to attempts for the transformation rather than the achievement of reform. Results indicate that the process of reform occur slowly when training staff development activities carried out at the same time. Accounting reforms in the
public sector in developing countries are also likely due to motivation by the result in a government, yet there is no evidence that these developments will ensure success. A fact that has been true in relation to the reform in our country.